


oh, comely

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Girlfriends/No Wives, Anorexia, Bulimia, Eating Disorders, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8828521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: i will be with you when your heart stops beating.
- 
Patrick makes a list of reasons to lose weight. It’s not hard. There’s 96 reasons in the list. He keeps it in his wallet, folded and tucked behind his driver's license.





	

**Author's Note:**

> obvious trigger warning for ed's. the purging scenes arent too graphic, neither are the sexual scenes. lots of self hate. lots of pete being very in love.

The thing about Pete is that he isn’t judgemental. And it drives Patrick up the fucking wall. 

Every morning, Pete kisses him on the cheek and smiles and on the bus he sits in Patrick’s lap and touches his thighs and stomach and it’s infuriating. 

“Just let me die, Pete,” he wants to say, “Just let me die.”

Because the iron grip Pete has on Patrick’s psyche is the only thing keeping him from it. Dying. 

-

All things considered, it doesn’t start out that bad. 

Vegetarian, three meals a day, 1200, diet soda, water, tea. Better for his voice, better for the band, better for the fans, better for everyone. 

He loses some weight. It’s okay. Not much, but something. Pete notices, in his Pete way, and subtly congratulates him in the form of a XL shirt, not a 2XL. He’s not celebrated the lost fat, he’s celebrating the Happy Patrick, which is what happens when he sees the number go down on the scale. Happy, Happy, Happy Patrick. 

Then he decides, who needs breakfast? Not him. That’s for sure. 

Pete sits on his lap, boney ass poking his thighs, eating muffins and cereal and everything they would've shared if Patrick hadn’t said _not hungry_.

He makes a list of reasons to lose weight. It’s not hard. There’s 96 reasons in the list. He keeps it in his wallet, folded and tucked behind his driver's license. 

_1\. To be able to sit on Pete’s lap instead. 2. To be able to not be embarrassed about pants shopping. 3. To be able to feel good about myself._

So on and so forth. 

Lunch and dinner. He makes plans every day, and tries to follow them. It works okay. He sometimes doesn’t, when Pete feeds him at restaurants or when Joe has a leftover quesadilla.

_The guys say they’ll order pizza for lunch today, I eat one slice and one of Andy’s oranges. If pizza is leftover, I have two slices for dinner and another orange and a half of the chocolate bar Pete inevitably gets and eats half of before getting all depressed-nonhungry._

One day, he searches if low fat bread exists when he finds websites for this stuff. 

It’s kind of repulsive. He kind of loves it. 

Most if the forum-goers are girls, young and pretty and trying to get to 100, 95, 80. He feels out of place, so he doesn’t make an account. And if he did, he might be discovered. 

That’s the very very last thing he wants. 

“It’s 2006, there’s a website for everything,” Is what William said when he off-handedly brought it up. Everyone knew about William. He told everyone he was in recovery. 

Patrick wants know how he did it. He feels sick with himself whenever he thinks that. Well, he always feels sick with himself. 

It’s on these websites he learns about calories. The enemy. 

He never liked math. Hated it, actually. Thought it was the worst. But he learns to love it, counting until numbers in the low hundreds line his new journal. He has a journal for it now. 

The journal is kind of where everything goes to shit. 

It’s been months, now. He can’t keep track. His head is always spinning. He binges sometimes, and throws it up. Not a lot. Maybe once(twicethreefour) times a month. 

He purges beside a child's playground and wants to kill himself for it.

Pete notices how disgusted Patrick has been with himself, because he sees everything. When he’s about to go down on Patrick, he lifts his shirt and spends extra time kissing his stomach and his sides until Patrick has to physically push his head down. 

As much as Patrick loves Pete, and loves how fucking _kind_ he is, he wants someone to really degrade him. He wants it so bad. 

He asks Pete, and Pete says he couldn’t do that to him. So he gives him permission to, for one night, find someone who will.

So he hires a hooker, a girl who calls herself Dazzle, and has her degrade him while she rides him, called him a fat fucking piece of shit until he cums and pays up. 

He’s a cheat now, too, even with permission. The guilt is so deep and painful and amazing that he goes back to her three times. Every time, she tells him that he’s not losing enough and that he needs to if he ever wants to be gorgeous.

It helps.

He’s down to just-dinner, he’s losing more slowly since he weighs less. They all notice. He doesn’t think they care.

He passes out three times in the span of one week. Joe sees the last time. He talks to Pete. Pete talks to Patrick.

“Have you been eating alright?” Pete starts with, straddling him on his couch. Tour’s over. Finally. No possibility of passing out on stage to fret over.

“Yeah,” Patrick lies easily, “Why do you ask?” He tries to kiss Pete’s neck to distract him, but Pete pulls back and crosses his arms.

“I know when you lie to me.” He says, sliding off his lap and next to him. “No touching until you tell me why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you stopped eating.” 

Patrick caves in a little bit. He doesn’t respond. He wrings his hands and notices how cold they are.

“You could die,” Pete said, almost pleading. “What would I do if you died?”

He didn’t respond. He stared at his hands. His fingernails were ringed blue. Malnutrition. He wanted to die. God. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Pete looks like he’s about to burst into tears. “Don’t be sorry. I just want you to get better. You know that’s all I want, right? I don’t care what you look like.”

He remembered the XL shirt and his stomach kisses. He knew. He wished he didn't. 

\--

Pete stays with him a whole week. He watches him eat every meal. Patrick goes to the bathroom and throws it all up when the sink’s running. 

He wants to be better for him. But he never will be. 

When Pete finally leaves, he takes all the food Pete bought for him and throws it away. He feels bad, tries to scavenge some of it. Eats a lot. Purges it in his kitchen sink. 

He vows to stop making himself vomit because it’ll ruin his voice. It’s funny because he’s already ruining his life by not eating. He doesn’t laugh.

Pete threw away all his booze. That was a problem.

Going to the bar was something he hated, so he tried to refrain, but this was a time he really needed to drink to forget. 

He counted the calories of every shot he took, every beer he drank, and it was more than he had ever imagined. He would've purged if his drunken self hadn’t forgot how, and he tried to fit three fingers down his throat for an hour as he weeped in the bar bathroom. 

He eventually called William to come pick him up.

“Hey,” He said, “I’m drunk.”

William said that he could tell and, through ten long minutes of incoherent rambling, he deciphered where Patrick was and said he would be there soon.

William found him puking, this time from the alcohol, outside of the bar.

“Hey, hey, hey,” William whispered, “C’mon, let’s get into my car. I’ll drive you home.”

The ride was awkward. William offered to call Pete, but Patrick immediately shook his head until his nausea went from bad to worse.

When they got to his house, William parked and slowly helped him out of the car and into the house, where Patrick promptly fell asleep on the couch. 

When he woke up, he had a killer migraine and William was making bacon. 

“Good morning.” He said, flipping the bacon over in its pan.

Patrick was quiet. Did he want to eat it and feel better, just to feel worse later? Bacon. 43 calories per strip. He could eat a smaller dinner. 500 - 43 = 457.

The math made his head hurt. 

William came from the kitchen and placed a plate with four strips of bacon in front of him. The grease glinted. Patrick felt disgusted.

“Dude, it’s just bacon.” William said, taking a seat on the chair across from Patrick. “Food isn’t the enemy or whatever those websites make you think.” 

“Okay.” Patrick ate one strip and left three on the plate. He couldn’t help but feel accomplished. Victory over food.

He couldn’t help but notice that William wasn’t eating much either, taking the smallest bites possible. He gave himself two strips. He ate one.

“How do you do it?” Patrick asked, poking at the leftover bacon with his finger.

The horror on William’s face was immediate and full of guilt. “Don’t tell me this was because of me.”

“It wasn’t. I was just wondering.”

William sat quietly for a long time. 

“Okay. You want me to help you? Because I will.”

Patrick nodded. He could feel liquid excitement in his veins.

“But we’re competing.” William said. “And I always win.”

\--

This motivation is excruciatingly good.

Him and William hang out as often as possible, taking sips of water and chewing gum and pushing their food around their plates. 

On the opposite side, him and Pete are seeing each other less and less. He tells Pete that he’s getting better. He’s not.

William says that Gabe knows about them both, and that he worries, but he won’t tell Pete because business of Pete’s is business of everyone in the whole world. He’s not wrong. 

They cook together for other people, especially Ryan. They love watching him devour 683 calorie pasta like it’s nothing, they love making him cake and pie and everything sugary-sick. 

Patrick eventually stops purging for the most part, because William says it’s losing. If you mess up so bad you’re willing to destroy your own body, how are you winning? You’re not. You’re just not. 

They often say things like, “I wish I had your hands,” and “Your calves are to die for.” Competition. 

When it’s time to go back on the road again, minus William, Patrick is upset. Who’s gonna keep him so motivated?

He does have Gabe, who is skinny enough to inspire him at least a bit. He goes over his calorie limit a lot, but never by too much. Everyone is so distracted by how everyone hates the new album, nobody has time to pay attention to the fat boys eating habits. 

But the thing about everyone hating the album is that he takes it personally. He tries to go down to 430cal a day, with the days they don't play shows or do interviews as fast days. 

Him and Pete have sex a lot. They can afford hotel rooms almost every night now, so they’ll get back from the show and Patrick will suck him off or Pete will fuck him and they’ll watch TV until they fall asleep. Patrick keeps his shirt on.

Pete has finally agreed to degrade him, but about anything but weight. He calls Patrick a slut and a whore and a cocksucker until he’s blue in the face, but he won’t say he’s fat. Never.

Pete is amazing. Patrick often wonders how he managed to get someone so amazing. 

His hair falls out. People notice. He say it runs in the family.

When he tells William about that, he says, “What? Being a fat anorexic runs in the family?”

Patrick fasts for two days after that, and he’s thankful for William. Later, he says that William’s face is looking a little bit round to return the favor. 

It works. They work. 

Before he knows it, William faints onstage and he’s in the hospital. Malnutrition. And it’s all Patrick’s fault.

Gabe screams at Patrick in front of everyone, about how William was trying to get better and Patrick made him worse and _everyone_ heard him.

Everyone knows about their competition. Patrick wonders who is winning. Him, for living, or William, for almost dying?

Pete ignores him and sleeps in Andy and Joe’s room that night. 

The next morning, Patrick goes to breakfast with his bandmates and eats a waffle with maple syrup. Pete smiles.


End file.
